Appeal No. 2003-0293
Application No. 09/472,197 Page 15
latter category applies, for example, to consumers who have
bought low-fat foods, but do not fall within a more specific
product category that is part of the promotion. For example, the
promotion may deal only with frozen foods, but the consumer has
purchased many other low-fat items, such as dairy products or
beverages (col. 7, lines 21-40).
From the disclosure of Jermyn of using shopping behavior in
addition to purchase history in generating incentives to users,
we find that an artisan would have been motivated to use purchase
behavior classification information in addition to purchase
history as a complement to the purchase history information used
by Scroggie. Thus, we agree with the examiner (answer, page 5)
that an artisan would be motivated to combine the teachings of
Scroggie and Jermyn in order to provide consumers with incentives
that they would most likely be interested in.
We are not persuaded by appellants’ assertion (reply brief,
page 5) that Scroggie alone provides the advantage of presenting
customers incentives they would be interested in, and that,
therefore, the combination of Scroggie and Jermyn would be
redundant. We find that providing purchase behavior
classification information provides an additional advantage over
just using purchase history because it permits closer tailoring
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